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http://www.thesundaily.com/article.cfm?id=59467
Rubber handle for Blades?
The proposed second major investment by a Malaysian in a British football club has been dogged by managerial changes and a court case, but is still on. theSun's BOB HOLMES has followed the saga from Bukit Tunku to Sheffield
IT seems a long time ago now, that expectant summer day back in August. It was the first home game of the season when anything seemed possible – promotion to the Promised Land of the Premier League, even restoring credibility.
If the weather was not especially summery, there was a warm glow coming from the directors’ box. Providing much of it was a “mystery foreign investor”.
After a good lunch, Datuk Vinod Balachandra Sekhar (pix)took his seat next to Sheffield United chairman Kevin McCabe.
Vinod was to put up to £5 million (RM25 million) via his family trust into the club – the second major stake in a Championship outfit by a Malaysian (following Tan Sri Vincent Tan’s in Cardiff City) inside a year.
An agreement had already been signed on a napkin in a Sid’s pub in Kuala Lumpur two weeks earlier. United chief executive Trevor Birch was keeping this not-so-hard copy and promised to frame it once the deal had been sealed. The framers are still waiting.
United went 3-0 down after 22 minutes. At the time, it was regarded as a blip – they were playing rich and fancied Queen’s Park Rangers – but the fans were blaming manager Kevin Blackwell.
So was McCabe who sacked him minutes after the final whistle. But it was not a blip, more the shape of things to come. Because things would get bad and things would get worse.
Blackwell was accused of losing the dressing room but since then the Blades, as they are universally known, have lost the plot. To lose one manager might be regarded as a misfortune, to lose three in half a season ... ?
Blackwell’s assistant Gary Speed was swiftly installed as his replacement but after an unconvincing tenure, couldn’t resist when his native Wales came calling. An in-house appointment aimed at continuity produced anything but.
Next-in-line John Carver held the reins on a temporary basis but by the time Micky Adams was brought in from Port Vale at the end of the year, the Blades were not looking at the Premiership but at League One. They were not the only half of this Anglo-Malaysian alliance faced with going down.
In September, Vinod was accused of failing to comply with provisions in the Bankruptcy Act by becoming a director of 25 companies and leaving the country without permission.
Malaysia’s Director-General of Insolvency wanted to jail him. The Blades board could have laughed off their prospective investor there and then. Fit and proper person?
A Google search does not just set alarm bells ringing, it could send the fire brigade and a fleet of ambulances. Vinod says it is all malicious nonsense and if you search thoroughly you find more positives than negatives. This newspaper did.
Amid the controversies, we found huge donations to charities and prestigious awards. They include being the first Asian to win the Global Green award and inaugural Corporate Leader of the Year (2008).
He has addressed the World Economic Forum which named him as one of 40 “New Asian Leaders” in 2003. None other than Bill Clinton (pix) came to Malaysia in 2008 and told his audience: “You should be proud of this man.”
The audience has yet to make up its mind. Whilst admitting: “I took a massive hit” in the Asian crash of 1997, Vinod has bounced back.
“I had overseas investors who allowed me to rebuild and pay off my debts.” And he has always maintained that the bankruptcy papers were never served and the signatures were forged.
But in a difficult end to 2010, the prosecutor’s affidavits seemed to alternate with the changing of Blades’ managers. The napkin was not being framed but Vinod claimed he was.
It was not meant to be like this when these improbable suitors first met over a beer in KL’s leafiest suburb. McCabe and Birch had come to Malaysia in search of investment.
“We were looking for potential investors in the Middle East and Far East and Vinod’s name popped up,” said Birch.
Earlier he had told a fans’ meeting in Sheffield: “Football is as popular as it’s ever been … if you can’t find an investor now, then you probably never will.” Vinod was looking for greater branding for his Green Rubber company.
No dating agency could have made a match as unlikely as this. At first glance, it is doubtful if a single compatibility box would have been ticked.
One is British steel, the other Malaysian rubber. Sheffield United are on the wrong side of the tracks in an industrial city; Vinod lives in Bukit Tunku and keeps a pad in London’s Mayfair; the Blades are blue collar; Vinod mixes with blue bloods.
In short, they make Manchester United and the Glazers look like Anthony and Cleopatra.
That’s the kind of couple Vinod would have around for dinner if they were still available. Immensely likeable, this family man has the knack of attracting A-listers.
His “A” team would be skippered by Clinton, include Bollywood babe Preity Zinta, King Abdullah of Jordan with Bruce Willis as the hard man. Paris Hilton would provide a bit of flair on the wing and Mel Gibson and Wyclef Jean could be twin strikers. Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev would be the wise pair of old heads at the back. Too good to be true?
He would be ridiculed if it wasn’t. This is not a fantasy team – he has met them all and his wife and children have met many. Several have stayed with the family and only two weeks ago, this newspaper interviewed Oscar-nominated director Sekhar Kapur at his house.
He does not drop names, he plants them firmly in the ground with a documented story and photographs, some of which this paper has seen. It all makes Vinod’s London driver a little more believable when he says: “He gets his cigars from Castro."
It was a different kind of smoke that McCabe, 62, inhaled growing up in a two-up and two-down terraced house a free-kick away from the Bramall Lane ground. It was either the “rotten eggs” emissions of steel foundries or the soot of iron smelters – depending on which way the wind was blowing.
He and Vinod make the oddest of couples. McCabe is a self-made man, Vinod, 43, is the son of a famous father, Tan Sri BC Sekhar, known as Malaysia’s Mr Natural Rubber.
McCabe built a property empire; Vinod, according to his critics, builds castles in the air.
Scottish newspapers have claimed he had not delivered on a £8 million (RM40 million) promise to help build a medical and sciences block for St Andrews University.
He says: “I have already given them £5 million (RM25 million) in shares in Green Rubber and will continue to make payments. And within 24 hours of those stories coming out, the university made a statement in support of me.” It is a recurring theme.
Bruce Willis had threatened to sue over a RM3.1 million (RM15.5 million) investment and Tunku Imran Tunku Ja’far is quoted as saying of their association “enough is enough”.
Vinod acknowledges mistakes but has settled all his personal debts – and many misunderstandings. Willis retracted his suit within 48 hours and is still a shareholder of Green Rubber. So is Tunku Imran – and still a friend.
And there is an admirably philanthropic side to Vinod’s businesses – recycled rubber, development of a form of microwave radiation that inhibits the growth of HIV cells in the body and software to help the poor pay bills more cheaply by handphone.
He also wants to help Malaysian football by setting up youth development through the Blades deal.
Despite the colourful past, it was McCabe and Birch that found Vinod, not the other way round.
The Blades have still not recovered from the Carlos Tevez affair that saw them relegated in 2007.
“That cost us £200 million,” McCabe said. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time as we missed out on the increased television money.”
All United received was a grudging out-of-court payment from West Ham for around £20 million (RM100 million). So what was it about the club that set Vinod’s pulse racing?
“It was the global nature of the enterprise,” he says, “that will give me the exposure for (his pet brainchild) Green Rubber. The club’s links with Chengdu Blades in China, Ferencvaros in Hungary and Central Coast Mariners in Australia (McCabe owns a chunk of all three) are just what I’m looking for to promote Green Rubber on a global scale. Besides, I think Sheffield United will be in the Premier League very soon.” That was in August.
As the Blades have fallen down the ladder, Vinod has “slipped” with them.
In the 2008 Forbes Magazine rankings, he was listed as Malaysia’s 16th richest man and a billionaire. In 2010, he was not in the top 40. He has an answer for that too.
“That’s because I’ve given 60% of my wealth to the foundation (the Petra Trust),” he explains. But the size of the proposed investment has also been scaled down.
He’s now talking of a £1.5 million (RM7.5 million) sponsorship with £500,000 (RM2.5 million) before the start of next season and the rest over three years. So the deal is still on. When asked if it is still going ahead, Birch told me: “Our view is if it does, great; if not move on.”
Birch agreed that “we did a very good job selling each other” and “hit it off straightaway. We were looking for people of some magnitude and believe we’ve found one. Kevin is positioning himself to step aside one day and wants a partner who can shoulder some of the financial pressure.”
At the time, all they thought they needed for promotion was a couple of “judicious signings” which Vinod’s investment could have provided.
Judging by the welcome he received in Sheffield, they find him more than just a man they can do business with. Seldom without a glass in his hand or cigar in his mouth, he was instantly at home. Wherever he went, banter and back-slapping followed.
If United impressed him with their history and future plans, he certainly impressed them with his vision and vitality.
A mover and shaker indeed. And he was serious – I watched the QPR game sitting next to his banker whom he’d flown in from Dubai. The talk then was of shirt sponsorship, laying the perimeter of the pitch with recycled rubber and even Malaysianising the Blades’ anthem Greasy Chip Butty to Greasy Chicken Curry. He was even working on the lyrics.
That was then, this is now and rather different. McCabe has had enough and stepped down as chairman of the club although he still calls the shots as the plc chairman. The fans want the entire board to go. The Blades are odds on for the drop and one report spoke of “a negative atmosphere” in the ground.
Then, last month, came a couple of glimmers. The case against Vinod was thrown out – he was completely exonerated – and Sheffield United have pulled off two big wins. Now that Vinod has avoided going down, the question is: can the Blades?
“It doesn’t matter if they don’t,” Vinod insists as he prepares to announce a deal for Green Rubber with a major tyre company. “The trust is still going to invest. The club has great potential.”
So have a lot of his ideas. Delivering on them is now his greatest challenge.
